User talk:TheEternalServant
EmpyrealInvective (talk) 14:15, April 10, 2017 (UTC) Re: Story Welcome to the site, my name is Travis/EmpyrealInvective/Empy. To answer your questions upfront, the story's plot was the major deciding factor here (see below). As for writing perspectives, I would suggest writing in 1st or 3rd person perspective as 2nd person perspective (you) is hard to pull off and generally tends to alienate the audience rather than immerse them in the story. An audience tends to already put themselves in the protagonist's shoes so telling them outright that it's them tends to produce a bit of a disconnect where they question why they would act that way and not another. The story was deleted as it did not meet our quality standards. I was more pointing out the punctuation ("Can you please help me fix this? I hope things can go well between the both of us(comma missing)" wished Charlie."), redundancy ("Many people assumed that Charlie went insane one day whilst others were unsure. Whilst the police marked the boundaries of the crime scene" Avoid repeating words multiple times in the span of a few sentences), wording ("Charlie reluctantly stopped as the man intently stared at him with his very two green eyes." I assume you mean two very green eyes as 'very two green eyes' feels a bit clunky.), and story issues. Story issues: Here's where a majority of the issues were. "I wish I've never met her. It was such a mistake for her to push two burdens out of her whatever. Can you please help me fix this? I hope things can go well between the both of us" wished Charlie. "Wish accepted," confirmed the man as he vanished into thin air." Taking the typical botched wish promise has been done quite a bit and it doesn't really feel effective here. How exactly does killing her fulfill his wish? Wouldn't a scarier premise be killing his kids and keeping her alive as some misguided attempt at building a bond through tragedy or removing something he feels is interfering with his relationship? It doesn't really work in the tried and true 'be careful what you wish for' premise as the angel's interference directly botches his wish. Story issues cont.: While I'm willing to suspend disbelief that a shard of glass could stab someone multiple times ("Charlie rushed over to his two children and stabbed them with the glass shard as well.") I find it less convincing that they have an oven large enough to fit two children inside ("In his maddened state, Charlie slammed his wife's head against the drawers, opened the door of the stove behind her and shoved both children inside alive before sealing it shut.") or that they randomly have a camera constantly recording their kitchen ("They realised that the camera was still running and wanting to find evidence for the crime, they skipped the footage to the time and date of the murder."). Story issues cont.: The 'you're in danger' style ending also feels a bit forced. "Day or night, you are not safe from his presence even when you think you are. He can appear like anyone and one of his greatest tricks is to convince you that he is innocent" especially since he seems to target random people. A lot of character actions also feel fairly forced and are lacking build-up. Why exactly are two trained officers fleeing? ("The two police officers soon prayed for God's forgiveness, dropped the camera onto the floor and immediately fled outside.") It feels a bit shoe-horned in to drive home the spookiness of the events, but it doesn't quite work in the aspect that they'd view the recording at an active crime scene or that a house would have constantly running video that's been downloaded and saved. Or why a man is necessarily opening up to a random stranger they met who's claiming to be an angel about deeply personal matters. Final: There are other issues here, but I think this is enough for now. The story does a lot of telling, but provides little to back it up. Take this line for example: "He exists no matter what the rest of the world believes in. He exists regardless of your many attempts to try to suppress his image throughout history." Saying things like that do warrant some explanation. How have we tried to suppress his image, how are other cultures attempting to deny him? Things like this would help strengthen the believability of the story. As it stands, this needs quite a lot of revision. EmpyrealInvective (talk) 01:48, April 11, 2017 (UTC) EmpyrealInvective (talk) 13:46, April 12, 2017 (UTC)